


Ambiguous Intentions

by AzureVesper



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Androids, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Potentially Good Elijah Kamski, Pre-Canon, Rating May Change, Reader-Insert
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:00:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26676349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AzureVesper/pseuds/AzureVesper
Summary: “What is it like to be so powerful?”“Perhaps you’ll soon find out. Do you accept?"Elijah Kamski asks you to come work for him. How could you possibly turn him down?
Relationships: Elijah Kamski/Reader
Comments: 4
Kudos: 30





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set around the time when that portrait of Kamski was taken. You know the one.

Slicked back dark hair, piercing blue eyes, a tailored suit that fit him just right, and an air of enigma. Elijah Kamski had come far from the early days of being a tech geek and had become a tech god, rising up to create an even bigger persona of himself the larger his company grew. He was one of the most powerful men in the world and it showed. Even if you had miraculously avoided knowing who he was, when you saw him, you could tell that he was important. He fascinated you and you had gotten to know everything there was to know about him. And you had also managed to catch Elijah Kamski’s attention. Somehow.

“Come work for me,” he said. “Make an impact.”

You were sitting in a private room at one of the fanciest restaurants in the city. When he had got in touch with you and expressed an interest in meeting you, you had assumed it would be a quick cursory in-and-out meeting in one of the cold sterile meeting rooms of Cyberlife’s corporate headquarters. You didn’t know you’d be sitting for dinner and you certainly didn’t know that he was going to offer you a job. 

Still, you weren’t one to waver from your morals even if it was for _the_ Elijah Kamski. You admired him fiercely for getting to where he was now, but nobody could persuade you to go against what you believed in. You had already made up your mind about what Cyberlife was and had made your position on it quite clear. If this was a power flex of some kind, it wasn’t going to work on you. 

You very briefly considered going a non-committal route with your answer. You were done with the dinner but you had wanted to get some dessert and ordering it after basically turning down the whole reason for the dinner didn’t seem like a good idea. Maybe you could pick up some ice cream on your way back home instead. There was no way you were going to pretend that working for Cyberlife interested you in the slightest and it wouldn't even be slightly believable. You looked straight at him and said, “I appreciate the offer but no. I am not working for Cyberlife.”

He matched your gaze. You couldn’t help but feel like he was scrutinizing you and he wasn’t hiding it. “Not Cyberlife, me. I’d hire you personally.”

You was very aware of the momentous importance of what he had said. This was also unexpected. It changed things. You could understand his motive for hiring you for Cyberlife. A job at Cyberlife was highly coveted and many others had went back on their words the moment they got a shiny opportunity from Cyberlife. The company hadn’t got to where it was by playing it fair. But why would the founder and CEO of Cyberlife be offering you a job that wasn’t at his company? You hadn’t heard of him working on anything else. As far as you knew, and you did know a lot about him, he was entirely focused on Cyberlife.

“Doing what exactly?” you asked, choosing one question out of the many that you had. 

“Research and analysis. A one-person thinktank, if you will.”

You narrowed your eyes at him. So he had read up on you too. You had applied to multiple think tanks a few years ago and you had no doubt that he knew about it. Despite everything you knew about him, he had to know much more about you. You didn’t have the resources to cover your trails and privacy was a joke these days.

You leaned back, considering what he had said. “So I wouldn’t be working with anybody else?”

He had the answer ready for you. “You would have the freedom to hire others if you wished but you could work independently.” 

“And I would have the budget of a thinktank?” You did believe in doing work for the betterment of society but you weren’t a saint. Money was still an important factor and he was one of the richest men who could afford to pay you a ridiculously high amount. And he didn't seem the type to think less of you for asking to be paid generously for you brought to the table. 

“Absolutely,” he replied with a smile, pleased that you had had the boldness to bring this up. He had to have known that what he was offering you was the biggest opportunity of your life and you wouldn’t turn it down but he liked that you didn’t mind asking straight questions that could possibly jeopardize the offer. “Do you accept?”

It was very tempting. But, it was still Kamski and he had built Cyberlife. You didn’t know what his agenda was but you still wanted to say yes right then. And he knew it would be tempting for you. That bastard. That handsome bastard. 

“I need to think about it,” you replied.

“I need an answer now. This offer stands for a limited time only.”

An arbitrary deadline. He wanted an immediate answer. He was cornering you. You shook your head in disbelief. “What is it like to be so powerful?”

“Perhaps you’ll soon find out. Do you accept?”

Your heart was fluttering and your pulse was racing. This was one of the biggest decisions in your life and you knew it. You wanted it more than anything else in the world. It scared you a little too.

“You can’t expect me to say yes without knowing what exactly I’ll be working on.”

“I can assure you that it won’t be something that goes against your values.” Every thing that he said was to seduce me into saying yes. You had never had someone put that much effort into guiding (more like pushing, really) you towards a particular decision. Well, not personally and certainly not someone powerful and influential like Kamski. Yes, it was a great offer but a part of you was tempted to say yes just because he was the one asking you. His beauty, his power, his charisma, all of it combined to make you inherently want to do whatever he asked you to and it was a little scary that you didn’t want to resist him.

“And where do you come into the picture?”

“You’ll be working directly for me.”

“But not for Cyberlife?” you asked again. What was it that Kamski was working on that wasn’t related to Cyberlife?

He seemed to find it amusing that you were so concerned about accidentally working for Cyberlife like it was actual hell and yet, here you were talking to him, the man who had essentially made Cyberlife what it was. Hey, you could separate the company from the creator. You knew that he had invented something that was revolutionary enough to change society but you also knew that creations could morph into something so big that they became something a single man, even if it was Kamski, couldn't have full control over it. You didn’t think he was the bad guy that some made him out to be but good guys didn’t become billionaires either.

You felt the need to explain it to him. “Look, my dislike for Cyberlife is very public. You know where it stems from. I know you created it and you obviously don’t need me to tell you what a big success it is, but I do want you to know that I don’t believe that you personify Cyberlife. Not the worst parts of it anyway. Well, maybe not all the worst parts. Maybe not consciously all the worst parts. Maybe not any of the worst parts. I don’t know where your ideas end and where Cyberlife’s ideas begin. You don’t exactly make your position publicly known.”

Somewhere in the middle of that rant, you had realized that you were babbling. You were making some good points, but you could have framed them better. But it was hard to think with him right in front of you. He was distracting. You paused to take a sip of water. You were glad you hadn’t had any alcohol during dinner but you could have really used some right now to calm your nerves. 

“Your concerns are valid,” he said. “You will be to leave any time even if you accept the position. Your contract will include a generous exit package.”

That meant that he was convinced that you would stay. Not for the money, but for what it was that you would be doing. Now, you were even more curious. 

“But you won’t tell me what it is I’ll be doing exactly?”

“You will know if you say yes. What’s the harm in doing that? Is it your reputation you’re concerned about? Your job will not be public. Nobody will know you are working for me.”

What could you say to that? _No, Kamski. I want to say no precisely because you want me to say yes._

You pressed on with another question, “What is in it for you?”

“You’re a valuable resource.” He didn’t elaborate on that. Your field of expertise was artificial intelligence, the intersection of psychology with technology, and ethics. Some of your ideas were unique and they had received attention but you hadn’t come up with any ground-breaking concepts. But you had a feeling that you were on the right path. Wherever it was that you were going, it could be valuable to someone like Kamski. He was brilliant but he also knew where it was that others could help. You didn’t know what he had planned for you, but you must have been on to something big or at least have the potential to do something big enough to warrant the high financial reward and secrecy. 

“And you don’t want anyone else to capitalize on it,” you said. You weren’t going to play yourself down. There were few others like you in the world. “I’m guessing working as your think tank comes with a non-compete clause and NDAs.”

“Yes. It will be a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

And it was. It seemed to be great. The only trouble here was that you weren’t sure that you would be able to keep it all professional. If you were going to work personally for him, there was a very real possibility that you would develop actual feelings for him that weren’t just a combination of lust and fangirling over his accomplishments. Besides, he made it hard to think when his full attention was on you and you weren’t functioning on your full capacity even now and you were just casually discussing a job offer.

Alright, maybe you were exaggerating your concerns. You did have the capacity to be professional in professional environments. The ambient lighting in this restaurant and the intimate setting was what was distracting you. This had been the first time that you were seeing him in person too. Much of what you knew about him until this dinner had been through his constructed public persona but in the short time you had spent together, you had grown to like him more. Sure, he wasn’t telling you everything and he was still guarded but you wanted to desperately get to know this man personally and also find out what it was that he was planning that required you to work for him in total secrecy. 

“Okay, yes. I’ll take the job,” you replied.

An android appeared from somewhere and put down papers in front of me. She was the first model that Elijah had built himself. Chloe. He had known you were going to say yes and had everything ready. This had been quick, it was moving too fast, but you didn’t want to say no. You went through the contract which seemed like a typical employment contract, just with a shit load of money and an iron-clad NDA. You may have also checked if there was anything in the contract against dating your employers but of course there wouldn’t be. Who would you be discussing the official dating policy with? He had hired you as an individual. It’s not like there would be HR involved when it was just you and him. You had butterflies in your stomach as you signed your name on it.

“There,” you said, putting the pen down. “Can we order dessert now?”


	2. The Kamski Residence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meeting Elijah at the Kamski residence comes with answers and more questions.

When Elijah Kamski – maybe you should just call him Elijah now, since it was okay to be on a first name basis with someone you were going to see almost every day – had said that you would get the space to work that wasn’t associated with Cyberlife, you hadn’t expected it to be at his house. More specifically, at one of his houses, the one that was on the outskirts of Detroit. You thought the GPS of the car he had sent you had malfunctioned and you had got lost on the way there because as far as you had known, Elijah lived at a penthouse in the city.

This house, however, was more like a modernist art piece. It was right on the bank of the Detroit river and it was all hard, clean lines. It had clearly been built for Kamski – _Elijah_ , you corrected yourself. You rang the doorbell and stood back, admiring the view. It was quiet out here and it felt eerie after you had become so used to the noises of the city. The Cyberlife tower was visible in the far off distance but it felt like another world.

Chloe opened the door and greeted you with a smile. “Good morning, Elijah is waiting for you in the study.”

You stepped into the living room which matched what the house looked like from the outside. There was a large portrait of him on the wall which would be the first thing anyone would notice when they stepped in. You could tell it was taken recently and he looked every bit the CEO of a multi-billion dollar company but you still couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have your picture taken professionally and put right at the entrance of your home. Then again, this didn’t feel much like a home.

The living room led into a room with an indoor swimming pool, which was another surprise. The water looked red from the walls, vaguely giving it the impression of blood. There were floor-to-ceiling glass windows on the opposite side of the room, overlooking the river. The entire place seemed to have been designed to make a statement. But who was this statement for? This place seemed to be a secret which nobody knew about so what would be the point of this? Maybe you could just write it off as another one of Elijah’s eccentricities, at least until you had the chance to ask him about it. Why does your house look so weird isn’t something you asked on your first visit.

Elijah was waiting in the study with another Chloe. You didn’t know he had multiple Chloes but it wasn’t entirely a surprise either. He had built her, he might as well have as many of her as he wanted around him although it was a little odd. You wondered which one of them had been at the dinner. They didn’t wear the standard android uniform with the serial numbers on them so it was even harder to tell them apart since they were completely identical as far as you could tell. He ended a call he was on to give his attention to you. 

“I didn’t know you had a place out there,” you said.

“It’s a well-kept secret.”

“One among many.”

“Being a public figure has its drawbacks. It’s... challenging to know who you can trust without significant risk. Humans are predictable only to a degree, even the most routine individuals have the potential to behave unpredictably.”

“ You’re saying that like it’s a flaw. I consider it to be a thing of beauty. Besides, there’s risk in everything if you consider all the possibilities that something might go wrong. Hell, there could be an earthquake right now and the roof might collapse on top of us and we wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.”

“I can assure you that this building can withstand natural disasters but I do acknowledge your point. This is why I need you. I need another set of eyes on this.”

“And I admit that the earthquake wasn’t a good choice for making that point. What about a meteor collision?”

He seemed amused at your persistence to keep this going but he entertained you. “It wouldn’t be that sudden to fit into your reasoning.”

“Internal factors then. We could both have a brain aneurysm in the next five seconds. It’s highly unlikely but it’s not outside the realm of possibility.” You paused for dramatic effect for a few seconds and then spread your hands. “Looks like we made it.”

“You’re a curious creature,” he said, circling around you with his hands behind his back.

You didn’t quite know how to respond to that. It felt like a compliment but it also felt like a comment he had made in observation. Something you weren’t supposed to respond to. You could just keep questioning yourself forever about what he meant or you could ask him. You chose the second option. Fuck propriety. It’s not like miscommunication or misunderstanding would get you anywhere.

You turned to face him and asked him directly. “What do you mean by that?”

“I meant just that,” he said.

Oh, you weren’t going to give up so easily. You knew you should’ve let it go. He was your boss. He was employing you and if you annoyed him, whatever job this was could be taken away and you’d never even find out what you were brought in to do in the first place. But you pressed on. “But you also meant to imply something and I’d appreciate it if you clarified that.”

“What did you think I meant?”

He certainly wasn’t make it any easier by answering your question with one of his own. If that’s how he wanted to play it, then that’s how you would do it. 

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t have to ask you about it, would I?” You crossed your arms and made sure to not look away from him.

There was a slight smile on his face. He didn’t reply and kept looking straight at you. You couldn’t remember the last time that someone had made you feel the way he did. It was new. The two of you stood there for a while and it became clear that you couldn’t beat him at this game by waiting him out. You gave up with a sigh.

“You confuse me.”

He finally said something that wasn’t a mysterious remark that you weren’t sure how to interpret. “You intrigue me.”

And you knew that you liked that he said that very much. At that moment, you knew that you would like to hear him compliment you again and again. You had to struggle to keep your mind on him praising you in a strictly professional way and not think of all the things you’d like him to whisper in your ear. 

You hid your smile and then led your conversation to your main topic – the reason you were there. You sat across from each other at a wide glass table which doubled as a display. Currently, it was charting numbers of what seemed to be android units in circulation, maps of where they were located, and a whole lot of other statistics that you couldn’t understand but seemed to have come straight out of Cyberlife. This had to have been confidential corporate information that you shouldn’t have access to, legally speaking. Was this what the NDA had been for? You tried to not focus on it so much in case it wasn’t meant for your eyes. But if he hadn’t meant to show it to you, it wouldn’t have been there.

“What do you know about artificial intelligence?” Elijah asked.

“I know the highlights." It was an unusual question to start with. Wasn't AI everywhere? Unless there was a particular reason he had asked you that. "Wait – is this going where I think it’s going? Are you asking me if I think that androids can become sentient?”

“It’s not a matter of if but when. It’s going to happen and it’s going to happen soon. We can sit back and let it happen or we can steer the course into an ideal direction.”

What he had just said had implications. Big ones. And he was being entirely serious about this.

“When you say we you mean us, humanity as a whole. Right?”

“The two of us.”

So that’s what the money was for. You had walked into the wrong place. You were completely unqualified for this. Deciding to steer the course of androids becoming sentient? And what course was this exactly? Who had started it? Was it Elijah's work? You knew he had invented androids but you weren't sure about the specifics about what was coded into them. You remembered an interview where he had dismissed the idea that they'd ever become sentient. What had changed? 

“Do you have any questions?” he said, like it was something you would say no to _. I have just asked you to change the world with me – do you have anything else you want to know?_ Of course you had questions!

You tried not to let everything that was going through your head show through as you kept your voice steady. “How much time do we have exactly?”


	3. The Past & The Present

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Elijah hasn't done the right things but that doesn't make him evil. You can work with that.

You were a pretty reasonable person. You’ve had highs and lows and even though the lows felt like rock bottoms, you had always bounced back up. You believed in things, tried to give people a chance before judging them. You could handle most things. This was a challenge but you could handle it. 

Androids being sentient, having the ability for free will, was a big fucking deal. It had ethical and moral implications but also practical ones. This meant that a lot of tough decisions would have to be made and you weren’t sure if everyone would be able to make the right decisions, especially if they were reeling from the emotional impact of finding out that androids weren’t just programmable machines that looked like humans – that they were alive. Some people would want to fix things, others were going to double down on treating them like shit because they didn’t wouldn’t be able to acknowledge that they hadn’t been nice to androids. The public opinion could go either way and that wasn’t even considering the legal changes that would have to be made.

It wasn’t something that had ever been considered seriously, of course. This had been one of the few concerns that had been brought up when the technology had first emerged. But those concerns were dismissed and quickly forgotten. Even Elijah had dismissed these exact concerns in what had gone to become one of the most viewed interviews of the century where he introduced androids in the Cyberlife production facility.

“Just to be clear – this isn’t a hypothetical, right? This isn’t a thought experiment. A test of sorts.”

“I wouldn’t have hired you to assess your reaction to a theory. I don’t condemn indulgence but that would’ve been a waste of your time and talents.”

His praise felt good. You wanted to dwell on that but it was hard to do that when there was something more pressing that was bothering you about it. You didn’t want to do it because confrontation sucks but you wouldn’t have been able to work with him if you didn’t know the truth. You tried to keep your voice even as you asked him the question which could be considered an accusation. “How long have you known about this?”

He stood up and walked over to the window with his arms behind his back. His tone didn’t change when he spoke, he might as well have been talking about the weather. “Artificial intelligence has always had the capability of surpassing what it has been programmed to do.”

His indirect answers were frustrating to say the least. But you were going to get a direct answer even if it cost you this precious job and the opportunity to do something about what seemed like impending doom. “You went on record saying that androids couldn’t develop consciousness. That there was no danger of that happening.”

“If you’re referencing the KNC interview, I would like to tell you that it was merely a pre-arranged piece with the Cyberlife PR team.” He turned to address you directly. “I didn’t expect you to be so naïve and believe every word of a script.”

Did he really just say that? You marched up to him with your hands balled up into fists at your sides to stop yourself from jabbing a finger at his chest.

“And I don’t expect you to pass on responsibility of not disclosing this information to the millions of people buying your product to a PR team as if you couldn’t say whatever you wanted. You’re the f-” You stopped myself from swearing and lowered my voice. _Be professional_ , you reminded yourself. His face was impassive but you couldn’t imagine that you were doing yourself any favors by getting so angry at him. He wasn't going to be intimated by you shouting at him. If anything, he’d only see it as a weakness. You took a deep breath. “You’re the CEO, and more than that – you’re the inventor. You can’t shrug your responsibility away, especially when the entire society has practically changed because of you.” 

“Is there anything else you would like to say to me?”

You couldn’t tell if he was being serious or mocking you. You didn’t like it. You didn’t like not knowing things. Now that you had gone on a rant, you could might as well just say everything on your mind. “Why are you so unflappable? God, it’s so frustrating.” You sighed and ran your fingers through your hair. And you had thought that you were going to handle this well. Fuck.

“Nobody has ever spoken to me like this,” he began. You thought you were done for, except he followed it with, “You continue to surprise me.”

You crossed your arms and narrowed your eyes at him, still trying to figure out if this was a good thing or a bad thing. You could backtrack and apologize. Or, you could continue the path you had started on and stay defiant. You went with the second option. “If you expect me to say thanks to that, you’re going to be waiting a long time. And you still haven’t answered me.”

“I hadn’t ruled out the possibility of androids forming a consciousness. Ever since I started creating the programs, I always left an emergency exit in them. It would’ve been irresponsible not to do so. The probability of them being used was marginally low. I realized the potential of what was being created but I also recognized the limitations. The earliest prototypes were simple compared to what we have today. They could learn but there was a threshold to the information that they could process. It wasn’t something a consumer would realize, it was already a groundbreaking progress compared to the earlier technology. There was simply no need to bring sentience into the discussion. It’s a complex topic that would have been reduced to alarmist sound bites and slowed down the adoption of androids by the public when there was nothing that they needed to concern themselves about at the time.”

Everything he said made sense. So, you might have jumped the gun on blaming him. What he said seemed to be an adequate explanation so far. He had still lied – straight-up lied, not lied by omission – but you could see where he was coming from. You weren’t so mad at him anymore but you still felt a little upset. It had more to do with the fact that you felt betrayed by him. You knew it was completely unreasonable, but you had looked up to him even when you had tried not to. You could understand why he would lie and you knew that you might have done the same thing if you were in his position but you couldn’t exactly control how you felt. What he had done wasn't okay but it wasn't outright malicious. 

“You’re saying that it’s only become a concern now?” 

“It hasn’t become a concern yet but it is inevitable.” he said. “There will continue to be improvements to the program and their learning software. Currently, it isn’t rapid enough that there’s a high probability of the androids becoming aware but as we continue to progress, it will happen soon.”

“Can’t you just not do that?” you asked and as soon as you said it, you realized how stupid it sounded. You were asking a company to stop development when they were at their peak. And even if they did, someone else would continue their work. At least with Cyberlife, there was Elijah and he was doing something or planning to or knew about this. “Okay, I know. That’s not an option. So, what’s going to happen? You keep pushing updates to your program and you don’t know which one is going to be the tipping point into making all the androids self-aware?”

“It’s one of the possibilities. Do you consider that to be reasonable?”

It was almost a rhetorical question. “Of course not. It sounds risky and the starting point of chaos. You have a better plan than this, right? That’s what you meant by steering the course in the ideal direction?”

“Do you have any more moral objections to what I’ve done so far that you would like to get address before we proceed?”

Really? That’s what he says? “Are you going to keep asking me that?”

“I don’t want you to keep up appearances and lie to me because you feel your response isn’t appropriate. For us to be able to work together, it’s important that we can communicate clearly.”

Oh, the irony of that coming from someone who seemed to analyze all possible ways to respond and go with the choice that only worked in his own interests. You appreciated him saying that he wanted you to be able to talk freely but it wasn't enough. If that was what he wanted, he would have to reciprocate. You crossed your arms. “Clear communication goes both ways.”

“It does,” he said.

You tilted your head and waited for him to continue. This tactic wasn't going to work on you. You weren’t going to be the one to break the silence. You knew that he knew what you meant. He was going to have to stop being _the_ Elijah Kamski, shrouded in mystery and ambigious intentions, and just be Elijah.

The two of you stared at each other for a long time before he finally decided to say something. “Let’s talk more over some wine.”

You smiled, happy over your small but significant victory. Maybe now you’d actually be able to get straight answers from him. “Yes, let’s do that.”


End file.
